


atom to atom (feel it on me, love)

by kimaracretak



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort, Established Leia/Luke, F/F, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Intimacy, Multi, Reunions, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 01:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Ahch-To is the beginning of more than they guess.





	atom to atom (feel it on me, love)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naughty_sock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naughty_sock/gifts).



> He and his sister stood on either side of the bed, bending over her as if to protect her from the perils of the night with their own flesh and bone. To Melanie's dazzled eyes, they seemed to mingle and become one single arch of living substance raised up over her, beneath which she could sleep in safety.
> 
> — _The Magic Toyshop_ , Angela Carter

The ground beneath Rey's feet is firm and verdant, alive in a way that she's never seen before. Small violet and white blooms clamber their way up the hills, down to the sea, peeking up through the cracks in the half-cleared rocky trails. Furry, winged creatures tumble through the grass, half-flying, half-hopping, all unable to fully take to the air and all glimmering with the same faint golden aura of the Force that clings to all living things.

The Force is so bright, on Ahch-To, and she has not yet learnt to shield herself from the overwhelming presence of it like she once learnt to shield her eyes from the sun. She is not sure she _wants_ to shield herself, now that she has dug so deep into the Force to find the true heart of something she cannot quite name.

Not when she can feel the same gold draped over Leia, over Luke, the two entwined as he stands on the smooth white sands below with his sister in his arms.

From the clifftops, Rey watches. The rocky pillar digs its unfamiliar, jagged edges into her back, a texture so unlike the comforting roughness of her clothes or Leia's hands. Stone like this didn't last long in the desert before being ground down into sand and glass. People in the desert didn't look at each other with the sort of helpless, loving surrender that Luke is directing at Leia.

Rey can't see them, not really. They're down on the sand - different sand, ocean sand, unnaturally hard and strangely wrought - and she is up on the bluffs - different rocks, jagged rocks, full of secret crannies and hidden life. They're a twisting, leaping flame, two creatures who never learned how to exist apart now healed whole; Rey is high and lonely and the twins below are flickering in the wind stinging tears into her eyes.

But she doesn't need to see Luke's face to know his expression. It's the same expression Rey herself wore too often on their flight here, during the nights when Leia didn't so much surrender to sleep so much as acknowledge its temporary necessity: a look half-desperate and all-unnameable, hungry and whole.

She never let Leia see that look, scared of being flayed raw by her returned gaze in a way sunlight never managed. During the thin blue hyperspace days she kept a vigilant watch, over herself as much as Leia, because if she didn't she feared she would be on her knees, saying, please teach me, or maybe, please let me touch you, each as revealing and each as impossible.

She had wondered if it was worth it, then, what else she had to lose after leaving her planet behind and her friend in the infirmary on D'Qar. What was the worst Leia could say to her, if she stopped hiding in her bunk with her hand furtive and silent between her legs, and simply asked?

Now, as she watches the Leia down below, physically diminished by distance but more present in the force than ever on this planet, she thinks she knows. Luke's bent head dips lower so his lips brush Leia's temple, her cheek, her mouth, and Leia's hands move so quickly over his arms, his hair, all to keep him closer than possible. Seeing them, feeling the weight of their _togetherness_ even from so high up, she wonders why she had ever thought that might be a good idea at all.

 

**

 

The pulse from beneath the sea has slowed. Luke can feel it still, of course - couldn't stop feeling it unless he died, and maybe not even then, knowing the Force. It had been frantic in the days leading up to the Falcon's return, and Luke had known without knowing that everything was changing, again.

Too much was dying, again.

It's slower now. Deeper and steadier to match the beat of Leia's heart pressed against his own, like the Force knows that they're all three together now.

He's not sure if that's a good thing. Leia and Rey's presence has unbalanced the island, thrown into question all the tentative certainties he'd built about the way life worked here. And yet - holding Leia, kissing her, it's a certainty too, one he's long missed.

"You didn't miss me enough to call," Leia says sharply, and he's reminded once again how easily she reads him. How little understanding there has to be between them, when there is so much knowing. "Not even enough to let me know you were still alive."

He strokes her back gently, wondering how much of her anger she's feeling, and how much of his grief. "You would know if I'd gone," he says, and realises his mistake even before Leia goes still and cold in his arms. He had owed her that call.

He had owed her that and more, though she would never explicitly demand it of him. He had owed her her child whole and home, a galaxy at peace, his presence at her side, the knowledge of the Force that lived in their blood.

It is too late for most of those things, so in the space where he's holding his sister almost closer than his own skin, Luke sinks his hand into her hair and tilts her head up to kiss her thoroughly.

Kissing her is still frighteningly easy, after everything. Leia's mouth opens beneath his, and he can feel her fingernails digging into his back even through the wool of his shirt. She twines around him tighter than grief, the sheer presence of her in the Force a violent, vibrant thing that he couldn't let go of even if he wanted to.

"You wouldn't have known if I'd died," is all Leia says when they break apart, as if it's the worst thing of all. "Anything else - Luke, if you had said -"

But he hadn't, and he never would have, because the Force lives in Leia and lets itself be shaped by her hand, the void that was Alderaan a shield and weapon gilded by Senate-sharpened words, and all Luke has ever known is the unbearable life of all things, and how ill-equipped he is to protect them.

Maybe Leia knows that. Maybe they both know it doesn't really matter anymore. "Next time I will," he says, but he can't meet her eyes, instead focuses his gaze on the steadily creeping tide.

He's failed to keep too many promises, recently.

 

**

 

They need to move. Leia can feel it in the shifting sands beneath her feet, in the hungry, patient sea coming inexorably closer, like it knows it will have them soon enough, and then crash up over the clifftops and have Rey too. Leia is tired of losing people to the waters: Luke is hers again now, like he must always be, and Rey —

 _Rey_. She's been watching Leia since she stepped out onto the D'Qar tarmac, and dreaming about her for just as long. Her dreams filled the small ship, no matter how silent she tried to be, and though Leia tried not to intrude, the images were unmistakable.

It had reminded her of the first weeks of knowing Luke, meeting Rey, the sheer overwhelming sense of being seen and being wanted for herself alone.

"Rey," she murmurs against Luke's chest, and maybe Rey answers, _Leia_ , or maybe it's just the wind. "She’s so very like us."

"Needing to be too important too young?" he asks, and Leia laughs weakly.

"There's worse places she could be than between us," she says, which is not quite all she needs to say, but when she tangles her fingers with Luke's, it feels like enough for now. Neither of them need to say the rest: that the weight of the galaxy was what first brought them together and they wouldn't change a thing, and now that it's brought them Rey as well, they cannot deny her.

She turns to see Rey high above, still watching. In the Force she's a clear, burning flame, but on Ahch-To, she's wreathed in mist, something strange and beautifully, _differently_ alive. Without a word she starts heading up the trail, and Luke follows, never letting go of her hand.

But she doesn't need a hand to unlace the tie of his cloak with the deft, invisible strings of the Force, so much more willing to respond to her on the island. Luke has always magnified her connection, and, for the first time, Leia isn't afraid of that. Luke kisses her temple and doesn't protest the theft, and that's almost more of an apology than if he'd said anything at all. 

"So," she says, re-settling Luke's cloak on her own shoulders as they climb, and she thinks she sees Rey smile, "What do you do for dinner here? At least, I assume you've been eating." Luke laughs at that, but it's laced with sadness, and Leia understands all at once that food probably hasn't been a part of his daily routine.

For the night, though, dinner is fish and seaweed in Luke's small hut, the setting sun casting everything in an austere green-gold glow. Rey hovers in the kitchen, flitting about with the graceless nerves of one who feels they out to help but has no idea where to even begin. Leia finally takes her hand and draws her back to the table, and tries not to think too much about how Rey's hand feels just as _right_ in hers as Luke's did.

They eat in silence. There's nothing to be said that will change what they all know will happen after.

Except Rey pushes back. Stands, at the end of the meal, and bites her lip as she looks back and forth between the twins. "I'll go, then," she says, and her voice is controlled but her eyes are glimmering in the fading light. "You should get reacquainted, and I'll ... I'll get set up in one of the other huts."

She looks far too used to being sent away, and even if Leia didn't know what she and Rey looked like in the girl's dreams, that Rey guessed correctly what she and Luke would do once she was gone - even if she didn't want all of that as well, she would offer what she does anyway.

"No," she says, catching Rey's hand again. "You know what we are, to each other. You should know you have a place with us."

She can feel the shape of the arguments Rey wants to make, hidden under her tongue. But Rey makes none of them, simply allows herself to be led to bed.

She walks the few steps with the hesitant joy of someone who has never been asked to stay before, but as the twins move to undress her together, she helps with fumbling, eager hands. Leia shivers at every brush of Luke's hands against hers: it has been far too long.

But now, between them, and in bed and in the Force, Rey is safe.

They all are.


End file.
